Stephens v. Hall
| Decision Date | 02 May 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-15251.,03-15251. |
| Citation | 407 F.3d 1195 |
| Parties | Herbert Connell STEPHENS, Petitioner-Appellant, v. Hilton HALL, Warden, Georgia State Prison, Respondent-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
G. Terry Jackson (Court-Appointed), Jackson & Schiavone, Savannah, GA, for Petitioner-Appellant.
Paula Khristian Smith, GA Dept. of Law, Atlanta, GA, for Respondent-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Before TJOFLAT, DUBINA and PRYOR, Circuit Judges.
The issue presented in this habeas appeal is whether the Georgia Supreme Court unreasonably applied clearly established federal law when it affirmed, on direct appeal, the murder convictions of Herbert Connell Stephens on two grounds: first, that the suppression of arrest warrants for other suspects who were known to the defense did not deprive Stephens of due process of law under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963); and second, that the false testimony of a detective, who was cross-examined regarding his alleged falsehoods did not deprive Stephens of a fair trial. Although we do not condone either the suppression of the arrest warrants or the misleading testimony of the detective, the decision of the Georgia Supreme Court was not objectively unreasonable, and we, therefore, affirm the denial of the petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
On June 3, 1990, three young men, John Davis, Toria Pope, and Tony Daniel, were murdered at the Red Oaks housing project in Atlanta, Georgia. On October 26, 1990, a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, indicted Stephens and four others for malice and felony murder of John Davis, malice and felony murder of Toria Pope, malice and felony murder of Tony Daniel, and conspiracy to commit murder. On December 4, 1990, a jury found Stephens guilty of all counts except malice murder of Toria Pope and conspiracy to commit murder. Stephens received three life sentences to run consecutively.
This appeal involves a collateral attack of Stephens's convictions based primarily on arguments that were made in Stephens's direct appeal. Stephens alleges a denial of due process based on suppressed evidence and perjured testimony. We review first pertinent aspects of his trial and direct appeal and then his state habeas review and the proceedings in the district court.
Three problems with late disclosures to the defense arose in the trial court. The first problem, which involved disclosure of volumes of exculpatory evidence, arose before the trial and eventually contributed to the need for a recess. The second problem, which involved a third statement of a witness regarding another suspect for the shooting of Davis, arose after the recess. These problems were remedied by the trial court followed by the presentation of substantial evidence of Stephens's guilt. The third problem arose after trial when the defense discovered arrest warrants for two other suspects, including a suspect for the shooting of Davis. These disclosure problems became the main issues presented in Stephens's direct appeal.
On November 17, 1990, after an in camera review of what had been represented as the entire case file of the State, the trial court ordered the prosecution to release more than 400 pages of exculpatory material to Stephens. On the morning of November 19, 1990, the day trial was to begin, Stephens's four co-defendants pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. That same morning, Stephens requested a continuance on the grounds that he had not had enough time to review the recently-produced documents and the guilty pleas unexpectedly cost him any assistance he might have received from the attorneys for the other defendants. The trial court denied the motion for a continuance, but after Stephens's attorney then declined to give an opening statement or examine the first witness of the State on the ground that he was not prepared to do so, the trial judge granted a one-week recess.
When the trial resumed on November 26, 1990, the prosecutor, Nancy Grace, disclosed an additional statement of one of the witnesses. The statement was given by Torrance Jackson on September 11, 1990, more than two months before trial, and it was different from two previous statements of Jackson that had been disclosed to the defense. Jackson, an eyewitness at the scene of the murders, identified an unindicted person, John Ragin, as a participant in the murder. When Jackson identified Ragin, he stated,
At trial, numerous eyewitnesses testified that they saw Stephens rob and shoot the victims, and several other witnesses who did not see the shootings testified that they saw Stephens on the scene shortly before the murders. Three witnesses testified that they saw Stephens shoot John Davis. One of these witnesses stated that Stephens was the only shooter. Four witnesses testified that they saw Stephens grab Tony Daniel down from a fence, put his foot on Daniel's chest, and shoot him. Two witnesses testified that Stephens was at the crime scene in a blue Cadillac. One witness testified that he heard shots and saw Stephens in a Cadillac leaving from the crime scene. A co-defendant, who later recanted at the hearing on the motion for a new trial, testified consistently with the other witnesses. The co-defendant testified that he acted as a lookout while Stephens and others robbed and murdered the victims, and Stephens paid him $130 for his participation in the crime.
Detective Curtis Johnson, the lead investigator, testified that the police had several suspects. Johnson stated that, after Stephens and his four co-defendants were in jail, Johnson continued looking for two unidentified persons. Johnson testified, however, that neither of these two unidentified persons were "ever named as being the shooter." They were only described as being on the scene in the Red Oaks area the night of the murders. Johnson later admitted on cross-examination that, in the recently disclosed statement of September 11, 1990, Torrance Jackson identified John Ragin as the man who shot John Davis.
On December 28, 1990, after his convictions, Stephens moved for a new trial. In an amended motion filed on October 20, 1993, Stephens alleged that the State had suppressed the existence of arrest warrants for other suspects, including a warrant for John Ragin on the charge of murder of John Davis. The court held a hearing on the motion on November 3 and 4, 1993, and denied the motion on January 25, 1994. On February 21, 1994, Stephens filed a notice of appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.
On direct appeal, Stephens raised two issues that are pertinent to this habeas appeal. First, Stephens argued that he was denied a fair trial, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, because the State suppressed, until after his trial, the existence of arrest warrants for John Ragin and Travis Williams. Second, Stephens argued that the State deprived him of a fair trial by using false testimony regarding the existence of other named suspects. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the convictions. See Stephens v. State, 264 Ga. 761, 450 S.E.2d 192 (1994).
The court rejected Stephens's argument that the concealment of the arrest warrants violated his right to a fair trial under Brady. Id. at 193. The court explained that the arrest warrant for Ragin was "not so material to [Stephens's] defense that [its] nondisclosure would amount to a constitutional violation of his right to a fair trial." Id. The court reasoned that Stephens had been "informed of Jackson's statement" that identified Ragin as a suspect, and Stephens "used Jackson's statement extensively to cross-examine the detective to whom it had been given, in an effort to impeach the detective's allegedly contradictory earlier testimony." Id.
The Georgia Supreme Court also rejected Stephens's argument that the State had denied him a fair trial by using false testimony. Id. at 193-194. Stephens unsuccessfully argued that the existence of the arrest warrants showed that "the officers' testimony at trial with regard to the possibility of there being additional suspects had been shown to be untrue." Id. The court rejected that argument, like the Brady argument, because "the evidence underlying the arrest warrants was admitted at trial and was used by [Stephens] on cross-examination." Id. at 194.
On April 11, 1997, Stephens filed a habeas petition in the Superior Court of Tattnall County, Georgia. The state court held an evidentiary hearing where five witnesses testified, including Grace, and Detectives Hogan and Johnson, and the trial record and direct appeal record were introduced. The state habeas court denied Stephens's petition on January 28, 1999. The state habeas court concluded that neither the Brady claim regarding the arrest warrants nor the due process claim regarding false testimony could be relitigated in state habeas review. On May 14, 1999, the Georgia Supreme Court denied Stephens's application for a certificate of probable cause to appeal.
On May 24, 1999, Stephens filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia under 28 U.S.C. section 2254. The petition was assigned to a magistrate judge who granted Stephens's motion for appointed counsel and his motion for leave to conduct discovery. On April 2, 2003, the magistrate judge entered his report and recommendation that Stephens's petition be denied.
The district court adopted the majority of the report and...
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